Ashworth notes that "Poe populates his fiction with kindred men: white men angry, aggrieved, and vindictive" (p. 5). In this book she is concerned with understanding that not with blaming Poe. Thus, in Poe's troubled relationship with his foster father, John Allan, she finds an "intransigent" conflict with Poe as "the repentant son; Allan the unforgiving father" (p. 141). Each of the five chapters is centered on a specific text and "a perverse emotion that propels the narrative: hate, melancholia, disgust, revenge, and resentment" (p. 5)… Ashworth's conclusion addresses contemporary "perverse feelings," offering the tentative hope that "in ambivalence, we can feel discouraged and hopeful, compassionate and hostile, anxious and detached" (p. 199). Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

Choice Reviews

Perverse Feelings: Poe and American Masculinity is highly original. It takes what we think we know about Poe’s work and life and pushes it into a new light, generating convincing and fascinating interpretations of white masculinity through careful readings of his tales. Suzanne Ashworth moves with stunning rigor through details drawn from a range of sources: biography, medical history, affect theory, literary theory, gender theory, antebellum politics, and literary analysis. This book makes a significant contribution to Poe scholarship as well as a valuable contribution to the history of emotions and race in the antebellum United States.

Dana Medoro, University of Manitoba and author of Certain Concealments: Poe, Hawthorne, and Early Nineteenth-Century Abortion